Kursk Sub's Fuel Reloaded Onto Special Freight Train

The Atomoflot repair facility based in Murmansk finished, Monday, reloading spent nuclear fuel from the retrieved Kursk submarine onto special train cars.

This was one of the most crucial phases in the effort to dispose the Kursk, the Murmansk maritime steamship company has told RIA Novosti.

It took five days to reload the fuel from the storage of the floating service station Lotta onto a special freight train. The train will soon depart for the Mayak production facility in the Chelyabinsk region.

The operation to extract the fuel from the sunken sub's reactors was rather complicated. The fuel was extracted at the Nerpa dockyard and loaded onto the Imandra boat registered with the Murmansk steamship company. The Imandra brought the cargo to the Lotta storage where it was to wait for the freight train.

The gags were placed in 40-ton containers the walls of which are 350 mm thick and offer reliable protection from nuclear radiation.

The work to extract and reload the nuclear fuel proceeded smoothly. Supervisory bodies made numerous probes into radiation safety and registered no violations whatsoever.